


Biography of the Middle

by Lomonaaeren



Series: 2013 Advent Fics [26]
Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Advent, F/M, Humor, M/M, Middle Age, Romance, Slice of Life
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-12-27
Updated: 2013-12-27
Packaged: 2018-01-06 09:18:33
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,527
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1105096
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lomonaaeren/pseuds/Lomonaaeren
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Someone else has been part of a prophecy, Harry and Draco’s adopted son is grown up, and grandchildren are being born. Still, life goes on.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Biography of the Middle

**Author's Note:**

> This is an Advent fic for calmnla, who gave me the prompt _30 years post-war (still young for wizards). Wouldn't it be nice if in the interim there has been some other big world-saving thing with other world-savers, that lets the Voldemort wars really become history?_

“And we are gathered here today…”  
  
Draco snorted under his breath and neatly nudged Harry in the ribs with his elbow. Harry rolled his eyes. He had never been a fan of the way that Draco managed to get away with being rude and attracting Harry’s attention away from where it should be, and all in public.  
  
Harry leaned close enough to hear, anyway. Draco held his mouth right next to Harry’s ear and breathed, “Where was the bonding wizard who could have said that for us? Sure, Teddy and Victoire look radiant—or am I only supposed to say that _she_ looks radiant? I forget. But if we could have been bonded the same way…”  
  
Harry laughed soundlessly at him, glad to be able to do that, for once. “And who was going to wear whose family colors? You know that Victoire doesn’t mind becoming a Lupin, she’s glad to have a different last name, but would you really have wanted to stop being a Malfoy?”  
  
Draco eyed him sideways. “The Malfoy line isn’t continuing anyway,” he said. “Since I chose you.”  
  
“But that’s a little different from dropping the name yourself, isn’t it?” Harry pointed out triumphantly, and watched as Draco flushed. He loved watching that, even after all these years.  
  
“Yes, well,” Draco said, and turned back towards the front. “Teddy is looking at us.”  
  
He probably was, Harry thought, waiting for his dads to stop nudging and whispering like a pair of teenagers and pay attention to the bloody ceremony. Harry turned around obediently, and the bonding wizard went on with the words. Victoire did look radiant as she beamed up into Teddy’s face, Harry thought.  
  
And Teddy looked radiant right along with her. As far as Harry was concerned, the word applied to both of them.  
  
*  
  
“There’s another bit on the front about Fields, if you want to skip it.”  
  
Draco looked up, and knew his eyes were flat. But the glare was wasted. Harry sat with the newspaper—well, most of the paper, the Quidditch pages and some other shit—in front of his eyes, and slid the rest, front page down, across the table to Draco.  
  
Just to prove that he could _too_ handle someone being more famous than the two of them put together nowadays, Draco picked up the paper. On the front was a glittering picture of Fields accepting an award from the Minister, shaking his hand and grinning while cameras flashed. It wasn’t an Order of Merlin, said the story beneath the picture, which Fields already had. It was a special award created just for him, to honor him for being the kind of hero people wished for.  
  
Not that the story said that, but Draco knew how to translate between the lines of the _Daily Prophet’s_ shit. He slammed the paper down again with an inarticulate snarl.  
  
“Problems?” asked the Harry-shaped silhouette behind the paper.  
  
“You know full well that Fields is getting honors you never had,” Draco muttered, and folded his arms, and stared at the wall.  
  
The paper laughed, and then it came down and Harry shook his head at Draco, grinning. “I didn’t want those honors. I had everything I ever wanted after you and I got together and adopted Teddy.”  
  
“A family?” Draco could understand the importance Harry placed on family, after the way _his_ parents had raised him to concentrate on the Malfoys and their glory, but that didn’t mean that it was _all_ a Malfoy would want. Draco had wanted prestige in the Ministry, and he had got a bit of it from being with Harry. A good position as adviser to the Minister, at least, with good pay if irregular hours.  
  
“And a home.” Harry stood up and leaned across the table to kiss Draco on the forehead. He no longer moved as gracefully as he used to thirty years ago, but Draco knew the creak of every tendon and the wrinkles around his eyes better than he had known the youthful grace of that young Harry, either. “You’ve given me so much,” Harry whispered into Draco’s ear. “I don’t resent what Fields has.”  
  
Draco huffed and folded his arms tighter. “I resent it on your behalf,” he snapped. “Fields killed a Dark Lord, sure, but he was _older_ than you, and did he really need to use all those showy spells to bring the Bloodlord down?”  
  
Harry leaned back and laughed again. “It’s a second Dark Lord now, remember? After he went to Spain and took care of theirs, too.” He looked down at Draco, the laughter softening into a smile that Draco couldn’t help treasuring, no matter how he might wish for more acknowledgment from the wizarding world for Harry’s sacrifices. “And I don’t mind it, Draco, I really don’t. I didn’t kill Voldemort with showy spells. Even after I gave that interview to the _Prophet_ about ten years that explained the Deathly Hallows and how they interacted with your ownership of the Elder Wand, most people don’t understand it. Fields’s triumphs were open and simple, and he courts the crowd. You can’t blame them for loving him.”  
  
Draco sniffed and sneaked one more glance at the picture. He wondered if he was imagining the way that the Fields in the photograph caught his eye and winked at him.  
  
“And I’ll be late for work if I stay here, and I don’t get paid to counsel my husband.” Harry winked at him, if Fields hadn’t, and moved for the Floo. “St. Mungo’s!” he called out, and vanished into the green flames.  
  
Draco smiled despite himself. _I suppose being a top Mind-Healer who’s saved a lot of people’s sanity isn’t bad, not next to what could have happened if he’d stayed an Auror._ He knew Harry had slowly been going mental in that job, especially given the hero-worship.  
  
Not that Harry minded worship when it was done _properly,_ such as on one’s knees and with one’s tongue. But he only accepted that kind of worship from Draco.  
  
Humming, Draco picked up the paper and went to read the less annoying parts in his study. He was waiting for an important firecall from the Minister that morning, and he supposed he could use the news to while away the waiting.  
  
*  
  
Harry stumbled out of the Floo and spent a minute dusting off his robes. Somehow, he was fine when he was Flooing in to work, or even the Ministry, but the hearths in private homes still made him stumble.  
  
He did have to raise his eyebrows when he glanced around. It was no wonder that he had stumbled coming into Teddy and Victoire’s new home. They had Christmas decorations, from Yule logs (not burning yet) to a full tree and shimmering tinsel, and Harry had snared his feet in the latter as he came out of the fireplace.  
  
“Harry!”  
  
Harry held out his arms, grinning, and Teddy all but leaped into them, even though he was taller than Harry now. He looked a lot like Lupin at the moment, except that his eyes were bright and glittering green, which always meant he was excited. Harry pulled back, smiling. “You were that eager to have the party start?” he teased. He could hear the voices from the other room, and knew that Draco was already here—he could pick out that voice in a crowded cathedral—plus most of the Weasleys. Harry had been held up by a patient who really needed one last talk, before he left the ward in St. Mungo’s and went back to normal society that pressed down on him so much harder than it did on most other people.  
  
“I just didn’t want you to be the last to hear the news, that’s all.” Teddy’s hands tightened on his, and Harry caught his breath. He thought he knew what was coming before Teddy said it, but he let Teddy speak the words. “We’re going to have a baby.”  
  
Harry wanted to melt and hug Teddy, but he knew that such displays in public sometimes still embarrassed Teddy, and this counted as semi-public. So he slapped him on the shoulder, grinned, and then pretended to count on his fingers. “Let’s see, if you’re _already_ visibly expecting, and you got married a month ago…”  
  
“You’re _horrible_ , Harry,” Teddy said, but his grin had taken over his face now, and his hair changed to black, so he looked like Harry’s son. This was the kind of teasing that he understood and appreciated. “No one else made that joke!”  
  
“They did it when you weren’t looking,” Harry said comfortably, moving towards the room where he could hear the clatter of voices. “Trust me. Molly knows _exactly_ how long before you can start thinking a pregnancy should show.”  
  
“Should is overrated.” Teddy hugged him briefly, fiercely, surprising Harry. “Thank you so much for the way you raised me,” he whispered into Harry’s ear. “You and Draco. Thanks to you, I _know_ that I’m going to be a good father.”  
  
“Could have fooled me,” Harry said, still joking because he expected it, but he hugged Teddy back as they once again took a step towards the drawing room.  
  
“And I’m glad that you’re here for another reason.” Teddy beamed at him, and his hair shifted to blond. Harry caught his breath even as he eyed Teddy skeptically. Teddy now looked like the son that Harry and Draco could never have between them, and he only did that when he wanted to be particularly charming. “You can help me restrain Draco.”  
  
“Restrain Draco from _what_?” Harry asked suspiciously, and in answer, his partner’s voice rose.  
  
“I see no reason that you can’t name him Scorpius. A very old Black name. And since Teddy is Black by blood and will inherit the Black properties…”  
  
“Stop talking about Harry dying!” That was Ron, and there was a slight edge to his voice that meant he had been drinking to celebrate. It was almost the only time that he didn’t get along with Draco nowadays.  
  
“He doesn’t have to,” Draco said. “If I invent my immortality potion in time. I just don’t know if I’ll share it with _you_ lot.”  
  
“He doesn’t really have an immortality potion, does he?” Teddy whispered worriedly against Harry’s ear, which meant the next part of Ron’s response was lost.  
  
Harry choked and shook his head. “No. He just starts talking about one when he wants to wind Ron up.” Ron half-believed that Draco could invent something like that, and that then he wouldn’t share it with any of the Weasleys. That Victoire was still a Weasley and Teddy would never have agreed to be immortal without her was something Ron hadn’t yet grasped.  
  
They stepped into the kitchen, and Draco turned his head and smiled sweetly at Harry. Harry smiled back. He did have some white in his hair, but it was hard to notice against the blond.  
  
“Here comes the man of the hour,” Draco said. “Who will _certainly_ agree that Scorpius is the best name for the baby.”  
  
The real pain in the arse was that, when Draco smiled like that, it was hard for Harry to disagree.  
  
*  
  
“We need a bigger house.”  
  
Draco lowered the paper—another stupid bloody article about Fields and how he was accepting an award for existing—and stared at Harry. Those were words he had imagined speaking often himself, and for a moment he wondered if this was a dream in which they had reversed roles, and Harry was speaking the words that, for some reason, Draco _should_ be speaking.  
  
“Excuse me?” Draco said finally, when Harry went on serenely sipping his tea and didn’t reveal that he was secretly a dream. “Now that Teddy’s moved out permanently, why do we need a _bigger_ one?”  
  
“Because I want to open my own Healing ward, and we can’t do it in a house this small.” Harry cast a frown around at the walls as though they had started to close in on him when he wasn’t looking.  
  
Draco was glad that he had put down his tea, so that there was _no_ way he would choke on it. He stroked his fingers slowly down the tabletop, and then said, pitching his voice in the perfect way so that Harry would know this was serious, “Excuse _me_?”  
  
“I’m tired of working for St. Mungo’s.” Harry fixed him with one of his own serious looks, and Draco saw where this was going. “I told you that a long time ago.”  
  
Draco frowned and nodded. Of course he had known that. “That’s a long step from opening a private Healing ward in your own home, though.”  
  
Harry snorted a little. “I’m trying methods that are still helping people, mostly people my age and those who fought in the wars since, but they’re too old-fashioned for some of my superiors.” Draco held his tongue; Harry wouldn’t appreciate the reminder that he could have _been_ one of his superiors, and that only his own lack of ambition had kept him down in the bottom ranks professionally even as he soared to the top of them by reputation. “They want to use more Legilimency. I hate it.”  
  
“It can be used gently,” Draco said. “The way Dumbledore used it.” This, too, was a long, long argument.  
  
Harry didn’t flinch at the mention of Dumbledore’s name anymore, but he did give Draco another of his serious looks. “I know that,” he said. “But I’ve never been good at it, and they want me to use it anyway. I know it’s just a fashion, and it’ll fade in a few months,” he added, when Draco tried to intervene. “But right now, it’s annoying as fuck, and it also annoys me that they have people working on this who aren’t as good at Legilimency as they should be. Sure, they’ll fling them in before they’re ready, and then realize they aren’t ready, and call them back and do something else with them. The chances that anyone will be permanently harmed are low. But in the meantime, they aren’t _helping_ anyone, either.”  
  
Draco reached across the table and caught Harry’s hand. He knew where this was coming from, now: something deeper and older even than Harry’s determination to be a Mind-Healer. Harry had told Draco once that he never wanted to go to bed again without making something new exist in the world. In his case, that meant he wanted to help someone, if only in a small way.  
  
And now his desire to continue working in hospital was warring with that old one, and Draco knew the old one would win.  
  
“We’ll see what we can do,” he said quietly. “But if you’re going to do this, if we’re going to move house and you’re going to bring your work home, then I insist that you hire at least one other Healer to work with you. Someone who can help patch up physical wounds.”  
  
“I was hoping—”  
  
“I love you,” Draco said. “I cherish you and desire you and want you as no one else could do.”  
  
“But,” Harry said, and lucky man that Draco was, there was a small smile twitching at the corner of his mouth.  
  
“But I am going to keep my own job, and work in my own house, and not constantly brew Healing potions and cast Healing spells for you,” Draco finished. “Perhaps I can supply you with some potions that won’t cost you as much, since you won’t be working for St. Mungo’s and buying at their prices anymore. But that’s all. I’m sorry.”  
  
“Don’t be sorry.” Harry leaned across the table to kiss him. “You know that I wouldn’t want someone who wasn’t a challenge.”  
  
Once, Draco would have reacted badly to something like that, worrying that he wasn’t enough of a challenge for Harry, that he had to do something every day to prove how much he was. Now, he kissed Harry back and murmured, “Are you going to be the one to tell Teddy and the rest of the Weasleys? Or am I?”  
  
“You do it,” Harry said. “I want to enjoy the shouting for once.”  
  
“It’s a _riveting_ spectator sport,” Draco assured him.  
  
*  
  
“Well, that went well.”  
  
“The secret to not having lots of trouble with announcing that you’re moving,” Harry agreed, pulling off his robe and trying not to be self-conscious as Draco’s eyes roamed his body. “Have Teddy immediately announce that he’s going to buy the house because he wants his _twin_ children to grow up in his childhood home.”  
  
“Hmm-mm,” Draco said, in the tones of someone who had already forgotten all about that. “Come _here_.”  
  
Harry turned around and moved towards Draco, wincing as something popped in his knee. Or maybe his ankle. Sometimes it was hard to tell the difference. He wasn’t old by wizarding standards, but he wondered if his body knew that.  
  
Draco drew him down onto the bed, kissing him so quickly that Harry barely felt it, and then fleeting down his body with fingers and mouth. Harry moaned and opened his legs. Draco’s mouth had already slid over his cock, and while Draco might be old in all sorts of ways, Harry thought his mouth was still young in the ways that counted.  
  
Then thought faded to the pounding rhythm of Draco’s tongue, and his fingers sneaking back around to Harry’s balls and hole. By now, he didn’t need to ask what Harry liked; he knew, just like Harry knew that what Draco liked most when _Harry_ was between _his_ legs was Harry’s mouth fastened tight and his tongue doing all the work.  
  
Harry’s vision started to blur, and he shook his head. “No,” he gasped. “Won’t be good for—anything but one round today. In.”  
  
He wasn’t coherent, but that didn’t matter. Draco popped off, and then popped the lid off the pot of the only potion he still brewed on a regular basis. It relaxed and loosened and spread a little cream that would heal and ease any painful muscles later. Harry had told him that he could make a fortune if he sold it, but Draco had always refused.  
  
Harry honestly _didn’t_ know if that was because Draco didn’t want to share the secret or didn’t want to be known as the maker of a lube potion. Or maybe because, in Draco’s twisted mind, this somehow meant people would try to fuck Harry.  
  
Draco’s fingers slid into him, and his thoughts blurred and turned white and blue. Harry whined, but Draco never hurried over this point, and the ghosts of all the arguments Harry could have marshaled, and, in the past, _had_ marshaled, burned and blazed over the bed and then vanished. He could only spread his legs wider.  
  
Draco caressed his heels, something he liked doing, and buried his fingers as deep as they would go. Harry sighed as the potion took effect and his arse relaxed.  
  
And then Draco was lining himself up, and it again seemed Harry must have lost track of time, since preparation usually took longer. But when they used the potion, of course, Draco didn’t have to spend as long, and Harry, aroused and tired both at once, lifted hole and hips to welcome him.  
  
Draco slid inside and groaned luxuriously. Harry watched him, as Draco tossed his head back and then winced a little. That hurt as it wouldn’t have several years ago, Harry knew. Or ten years ago. Sometimes, it was easy to lose track of time like that, things like that.  
  
Easy to lose track of when he hadn’t been with Draco, hadn’t been raising Teddy, hadn’t made so many choices that defined him.  
  
Once, it had been easy to believe that his life had been defined by his killing of Voldemort.  
  
Harry closed his eyes and smiled drowsily, enjoying the way Draco rode him, enjoying the little popping noises—yes, it was his knee—that would drive Draco spare and make him speak to Harry in the morning, enjoying the fire’s warmth on his scarred side, enjoying the pleasure building in his bollocks, enjoying _everything_ about this.  
  
The flame and the heat broke over him, and Harry gasped his way through an orgasm almost painful in its intensity. Draco followed him, panting, making Harry reach up and feel his chest to make sure that his lungs were functioning all right.  
  
Draco swatted his hand away. “Panting a little after sex doesn’t mean I have pneumonia,” he muttered sulkily, flopping down on Harry. “It means that you’re doing it right.”  
  
Harry rolled his eyes. Draco had never forgiven Harry for coming back with Muggle medicine for his pneumonia last year when the usual potions didn’t work. “Of course it doesn’t,” he said, and rolled onto his side, wrapping his arms around Draco. “No, no, don’t pull out yet. You’re perfect.”  
  
Draco smiled and closed his eyes, sulkiness forgotten.  
  
Harry watched him, and thought about Healing wards, and the new grandchildren coming, and how bright Draco’s eyes could get, before he followed him into their darkness—chosen, shared, together.  
  
 **The End.**


End file.
